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Friday, February 24, 2012

This Time Libertopia Will Be Different!

Upgraded and Adapted from the Moot, in response to my Dispatches from Libertopia, one Roderick T. Long seeks to assure me that
Libertarianism -- and I mean free-market libertarianism -- is essentially an ANTI-corporate, ANTI-capitalist movement. Libertarians understood this in the 19th century and lost sight of it in the 20th. But we're back. Your attacks on the version of libertarianism that is thankfully dying don't address the more authentic version of it that's being reborn.
To this I replied:

You can stipulate all you want to the contrary, but the results are in.

You know, this isn't exactly the first time -- nor even the thousandth -- that libertopians have contemplated the world of shit enabled by their ideology and then disdained all responsibility for the result only to magically rediscover "the truer true truth" that would be magic and not shit and then demand a do-over, this time gooder and harder and for-true, only to arrive in the shit once again as night follows day, after the usual scammers indulge the usual fraudulent skim, natch.

Just so you know, what it actually looks like when people really learn lessons like the one you are claiming to have learned is that you act differently as a result of learning it. You don't just double down on all your articles of faith and re-embark immediately on the same madness expecting a different result this time, this time, this time! -- of course, the truth is you libertopians just want to dream your dumb feudal dream and learning and understanding doesn't come into it.

We're onto you.

Also, too, is your name really Long Rod or is that just your porn name?

11 comments:

erickingsley said...

Let me guess: this 'true' libertarianism will demand deregulation, cutting taxes, shrinking government, slashing budgets, austerity and similar wonderful 'new' ideas that will surely usher in utopia this time.

Roderick T. Long said...

If you want to respond to our actual positions instead of inventing them for yourself, here you go: http://praxeology.net/molinari-pubs.htm

Dale Carrico said...

You libertopian bullshit artists have a lot of nerve whining your actual positions are being ignored when your actual positions (the ruin of which is perfectly captured in this dismissive post) ignore actual reality, whining about the "inventions" of your critics when your whole vision is a matter of invention and delusion, contemplating the ruin of the world facilitated by your market mantras and yet doubling down on the same old shit and pretending it's new New NEW and hoping the rubes will fall for the scam just one more time, just long enough to for you to feast on till you finally drop dead. Hey, howzabout joining in the real work of secular democracy and well regulated commerce and a scene of consent rendered nonduressed by means of a generous general welfare funded by steeply progressive taxes, the boring but tried and true slog of democratic reform, instead of trying one more time for get-rich quick scam of the shits? Of course not! How sad, how apt, your idea of a reply is to behave indistinguishably from an artificially imbecilent spambot.

Dale Carrico said...

Although you didn't deserve the courtesy, I have nevertheless followed your link, by the way, and found precisely what this post you are objecting to would lead a person to expect there. It is no surprise at all to discover among your resources right-wing reactionaries and market fundamentalist zealots like Bastiat, David Friedman (even more batshit crazy than his dad Milton was), Spencer, Stirner, Rothbard, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hoppe, Hayek, Hazlitt, Ayn Randroid George Reisman, in addition to many links to Ayn Rand herself, and wingnut Cato Institute links as well. I have read every one of these authors, and even taught some of them to undergraduates so they could grasp the rhetorical continuities in neoliberal and neoconservative discourse. Knowing what I do about this shit, I honestly can scarcely believe your nerve pretending outrage at my characterization of your views, realizing now how utterly on the mark I was. What ignorance and laziness you must be counting on! It's true you have some folks with whom I sympathize more among your resources as well, none of whom I wholly approve, but from whom I have derived sense, Proudhon, Goldman, Wilde, some transcendentalists (Emerson) and romantics (Shelley) and nonviolent revolutionaries (Tolstoy), and so on, but one can easily find them in far better company than the reactionaries you corral them together with. Your viewpoint is mostly incoherent and to the extent that it is coherent it amounts to a right-wing philosophy. Protest all you want, you "free market" fucks are the least reliable anti-corporatist anti-militarist allies imaginable. I see right through you.

Barkeron said...

Hey, Libertarianism is a perfectly cromulent system. Just look at all the success it had, like in Victorian- oh...

Roderick T. Long said...

If you'd bothered to look, you'd see that we were ATTACKING most of those people. But whatever. Obviously facts are not one of your interests.

Dale Carrico said...

we were ATTACKING most of those people

By publishing them?

Hey, you want to attack market libertarians? How about not calling yourself libertarians? How about not pretending markets have been "untried" even as the endless trying of them has ruined the world over and over again? How about not providing alibis for those you claim to be attacking as you always do? (I say that not because I haven't read your golden theories but because I've read your theories and those like them a million times and I know where they always lead even if you don't or are pretending not to.)

I advocate not smashing the state but democratizing it -- the reasons for this position are available under the heading "Against Anarchy" in the sidebar. You whine a lot about how I ignore you, how about actually reading the views of the site you are landing on for once?

And, by the way, you don't get to stipulate what the facts are from your libertopian mirage. Sorry.

Roderick T. Long said...

You are, of course, under no obligation to read our arguments. Misrepresenting them without bothering to read them is another matter.

Dale Carrico said...

Right back atcha. As I have said, not only have I read most of the materials you are promoting in your libertopian cul-de-sac but I have taught many of them to undergraduates. Read that sentence again. Got it? Good. You continue to swoop in on this blog whining about mischaracterization because I refuse to bow to your facile and falsifying stipulations, all the while refusing to engage with the actual terms on which I propose contrary positions. You are incessantly doing the very thing you accuse me of. Hey, don't let that stop you though, asshole.

Roderick T. Long said...

Your comments about libertarianism above make it obvious that you have NOT read anything from the C4SS/ALL perspective. Either you are unaware of them or you are lying. By this point I've stopped caring which. Good-bye.

Dale Carrico said...

Reliance on a neologism, worse, a neologistic acronym (c4ss, and yes I know what it stands for) isn't the same thing as having an actually novel insight or making a real contribution -- but good luck with your online movement, maybe you can save liberty even more by starting to sell hand sanitizer and household cleaning products on your website as well. More to the point, again, I have indeed read many of the writings you are promoting on your website, just as I have said, and your "evidence" that I haven't -- and I must be lying about it, by the way that's an elaborate deception involving among other things publicly available syllabi with course materials right on them -- is apparently the fact that I don't like them as much as you do. But that is just as likely evidence that you are misguided. But, hey, you you you just GO and take your toys with you, too, I won't have YOU to kick around anymore with my disagreements and stuff you sure showed ME!